from ocean to cloud WELCOME TO 400GB/S & 1TB/S ERA FOR HIGH SPECTRAL EFFICIENCY UNDERSEA SYSTEMS

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1 WELCOME TO 400GB/S & 1TB/S ERA FOR HIGH SPECTRAL EFFICIENCY UNDERSEA SYSTEMS G. Charlet, O. Bertran-Pardo, M. Salsi, J. Renaudier, P. Tran, H. Mardoyan, P. Brindel, A. Ghazisaeidi, S. Bigo (Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs France) Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs France, Route de Villejust, 0 Nozay, France Abstract: Coherent detection associated with digital signal processing has been shown recently to be a key enabler of 40Gb/s and 0Gb/s deployment over undersea systems. Increasing spectral efficiency of 0Gb/s systems and providing a channel rate of 200Gb/s or more are key targets for future systems. Some techniques targeting transport of 200Gb/s, 400Gb/s or 1Tb/s channels over transoceanic distances are presented. 1 INTRODUCTION Polarization division multiplexing (PDM) associated with binary phase shift keying (BPSK) has been shown to be particularly effective for the upgrade of dispersion managed systems using NZDSF and +D/ D fibers [1]. For new builds, advanced undersea systems are now being deployed using only +D fiber with PDM quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) and advanced forward error correction code. Using QPSK instead of BPSK doubles the number of bits carried by each symbol, and thus the spectral efficiency (SE), although there is a trade-off with the achievable reach [2]. In this paper, we present our view of the evolution of undersea systems in the near future. More complex multi-level modulation formats, e.g. quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) formats, could increase system spectral efficiency [3] [4] []. For instance, 1QAM carries 4 bits per polarization, doubling capacity per symbol compared to QPSK, while QAM carries 3 bits per polarization. Our analyses presented in this paper quantify the reach and margins provided by these solutions. Increasing channel count is also a key to raising total undersea cable capacity. Here, advanced pulse shaping techniques, called root raised cosine (RRC) with narrow rolloff factor, are presented as a means to reduce channel spectral width to be close to the modulation speed (in GHz) in order to pack channels very densely. Both techniques are combined to increase spectral efficiency and thus cable capacity to be close to fundamental limits. In order to support new client rates such as 400Gb/s and 1Tb/s, two or more wavelengths, densely packed within a superchannel, are used GB/S PDM QPSK WITH INCREASED SYMBOL RATE In order to reach 200Gb/s over ultra long haul distances, we investigated the impact of increasing the symbol rate of a QPSK signal from 2Gbaud up to Gbaud. [] Doubling the symbol rate induces a signal spectrum twice as wide. Channel spacing has thus been doubled from the standard 0GHz to 0GHz. The same transmission line based on Erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) and span of EX2000 fiber has been used in both cases. The experimental results were in line with theoretical expectations [], with similar performance being observed. Copyright SubOptic 2013 Page 1 of

2 Q 2 -factor [db] Q 2 -factor [db] Q 2 -factor [db] 13 0Gb/s FEC Limit km Distance (log scale) Fig. 1 : Transmission quality (Q²-factor) as a function of transmission reach for 0Gb/s and 200Gb/s At 200Gb/s, all measured channels exhibited Q² factor above the FEC limit, indicating an error free transmission at,000km distance ch x 200Gb/s Wavelength [nm] FEC Limit Fig. 2 : Transmission quality (Q²-factor) of forty 200Gb/s channels at,000km reach In order to further improve performance, digital non linear compensation can also be implemented Gb/s 0Gb/s Back-propagation nonlinear parameter Digital back-propagation compensates the non-linear distortions at each of the 240 spans (or even four times per span for 200Gb/s to have similar chromatic dispersion impact per non-linear step). Here, only single channel non-linear distortions are compensated. As expected, a larger gain is observed for 200Gb/s channel than for 0Gb/s as non-linear compensation is done over a spectrum twice as broad. Nevertheless, this gain has to be compared with the additional complexity required in the DSP. Chromatic dispersion compensation has to be performed 240 times versus a single one in a standard receiver. Even if each of the 240 small steps required has a lower complexity than full chromatic dispersion compensation, the overall complexity is increased by more than one order of magnitude, making the use of such a technique questionable for future undersea coherent transponders. 3 1TB/S SUPERCHANNEL BASED ON FOUR WAVELENGTHS CARRYING 20GB/S EACH RELYING ON 1QAM In coming years, 1 Terabit Ethernet is a probable successor of 0Gbit/s Ethernet. It is likely that the transport of such a high bit rate will require multi-channels or superchannel methods. Here, a possible implementation of a 1Tb/s superchannel is presented using only four wavelengths carrying each 20Gb/s []. Compared to state-of-the-art 0Gb/s relying on QPSK modulation and symbol rates between 30 and 32Gbaud to support advanced soft decision FEC, we increased both the symbol rate to 40Gbaud and the modulation complexity by using 1QAM, as shown in Fig. 4, while keeping a wavelength spacing of 0GHz. Fig. 3 : Performance improvement achieved using digital non linear compensation Copyright SubOptic 2013 Page 2 of

3 Q² factor [db] Q² factor [db] Power [db/div] Intensity Phase tuning elements Tunable Im waveplate V 00 I ps Re 40Gbaud t Constellation Electrical signal Pol. Beam V /2 0/0 plate splitter Q t t 0 DAC 2x2Gbaud PDM I/Q mod emulation QPSK Noise loading attenuator EDFA OSNR Coherent Rx Fig. 4 : Left : Four level electrical signals; Top Right : 1QAM constellation diagram; Bottom Right : Eye diagram of 1QAM signal By combining four wavelengths, 1Tb/s superchannels were formed and 22Tb/s were transported error free over 2,400km. In Fig., it can be observed that performance in the lower part of C-Band exhibits margins 1dB lower than for wavelength above 13nm because of nonoptimized gain equalization in this region. 40-Gbaud PDM-1QAM subcarriers 1-Tb/s quad-carrier channels FEC limit wavelength [nm] Fig. : Transmission quality (Q²-factor) of twenty two 1Tb/s superchannels, each composed of four wavelengths, over 2,400km 4 ADVANCED PULSE SHAPING AND QAM MODULATION In order to compare the performance of QPSK, QAM and 1QAM, a transmitter operating at 2Gbaud, based on GSamples/s digital to analog convertor (DAC) was used []. We first evaluated the noise sensitivity of the three modulation formats in a back-to-back configuration by using the set-up described in Fig.. Specific pulse shaping was applied by digital signal processing (DSP) to reduce spectral width to 1.1 times the symbol rate. QAM 1QAM wavelength [nm] Spectrum (0MHz res.) Fig. : 2Gbaud programmable transmitter generating QPSK, QAM and 1QAM with a compact spectrum shape PDMQPSK PDMQAM PDM1QAM Theory OSNR [db]/0.1nm Fig. : Measured OSNR sensitivity for QPSK, QAM and 1QAM, each modulated at 2Gbaud The OSNR sensitivity is shown in Fig.. Different bit rates are transported, 0Gb/s for QPSK, 10Gb/s for QAM and 200Gb/s for 1QAM, assuming % overhead for protocol and FEC. The 0Gb/s PDM-QPSK signal requires an OSNR of about ~14dB for.db Q² factor performance (corresponding to 3 BER), less than 0.dB away from the theory. The 10Gb/s PDM QAM and the 200Gb/s PDM 1QAM signals are in turn further away from theory and an error floor is observed. Copyright SubOptic 2013 Page 3 of

4 Q² factor [db] A WDM signal was then sent into a high performance recirculating loop consisting of twelve spans. Each span was composed of Corning EX3000 fiber followed by Corning EX2000 fiber. Channel spacing was fixed at 33GHz for all formats. Distance (km) Fig. : Transmission quality as a function of transmission reach for QPSK, QAM and 1QAM, each modulated at 2Gbaud. The transmission quality, expressed by the Q² factor, decreases with the distance for all formats but starts from different values, as shown in Fig.. At,000km, a Q² factor around.db is measured for QPSK,.dB for QAM and.db for 1QAM. Looking at a Q² factor of.db, it can be seen that 1,000km can be crossed with QPSK, while the distance reduces to,000km with QAM and is limited to 3,000km with 1QAM. If a high performance soft decision FEC is assumed and a Q² factor of db is considered, transmission reach could be considerably increased for 1QAM at,00km while QAM could reach,000km. Nevertheless, it should be kept in mind that some system margins are always required to ensure the 2 year system life of an undersea system. Another way to increase cable capacity is to raise the channel count. Widening the EDFA bandwidth is now quite challenging, so reducing the channel spacing is an attractive direction. From communication theory, it is known that the channel spacing can theoretically be reduced to the symbol rate without inter-symbol interference and thus no degradation. Our target was thus to investigate a practical implementation with a very small penalty, relying on root raised cosine pulse shaping with a small roll-off factor. PDMQPSK_000km PDMQAM_3000km PDM1QAM_3000km spacing [GHz] Fig. : Impact of channel spacing on performance for 2Gbaud QPSK, QAM and 1QAM Fig. shows the measured transmission quality for various channel spacings for all three formats using a roll-off factor of 0.1. Almost no penalty was measured when channel spacing was reduced from 3GHz down to 2GHz. When channel spacing was set to 2GHz (i.e. equal to the symbol rate), a penalty of 1dB was observed for QPSK, and slightly more for QAM and 1QAM. For channel spacing below 2GHz, complex digital equalization techniques such as maximum likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE) or maximum a posteriori (MAP) could be implemented to reduce the penalty []. 400GB/S SINGLE CHANNEL TRANSMISSION BASED ON 4QAM One solution to move to 400Gb/s per wavelength requires simultaneously raising the symbol rate to 43Gbaud and increasing Copyright SubOptic 2013 Page 4 of

5 Q² factor [db] the constellation complexity to 4QAM []. One key feature demonstrated with this experiment using this high complexity format is a very high spectral efficiency of bit/s/hz, meaning 400Gb/s transport with 0GHz channel spacing. 00km 14,0 10,0,0 14,0 1,0 Wavelength [nm] 43Gbaud 4QAM Fig. : Left :Transmission quality measured after 00km. Right : Constellation diagram of 43Gbaud 4QAM The associated drawback of this very high spectral efficiency is the transmission reach, limited here to only 00km. This reach reduction is in line with the prediction of Shannon s theory, which links spectral efficiency and signal to noise ratio. Fig. shows the performance of the twenty measured channels as well as a measured constellation diagram. CONCLUSION Current technology based on 0Gb/s with PDM QPSK modulation and soft-decision FEC is extremely effective to transport data over very long undersea distances. A combination of advanced pulse shaping techniques and QAM formats is required to increase channel bit rate and spectral efficiency beyond today s limit. Moving from QPSK to QAM modulation format significantly reduces the tolerance to linear and non linear effects, and thus reduces the maximum achievable reach. Use of digital back-propagation to improve transmission reach is questionable when digital signal processing complexity is considered. But improvements in soft decision FEC technologies as well as in transmission fiber characteristics will be welcome to allow propagation over transoceanic distances without compromising system margins. Transport of 400Gb/s and 1Tb/s service over undersea links will therefore almost certainly require multiple subcarrier, or superchannel, schemes. REFERENCES [1] G. Charlet et al, Technological Challenges for Field Deployment and Upgrade of Multi-Terabit/s Submarine Systems SubOptic 20, Yokohama, Japan [2] M. Salsi et al, Experimental Comparison between Binary and Quadrature Phase Shift Keying at 40Gbit/s in a Transmission System Using Coherent Detection, ECOC 20, Mo.2.C., Torino, Italy [3] D. Qian et al, Transmission of x0g PDM-QAM-OFDM channels with 4b/s/Hz spectral efficiency over,km, ECOC 20, Th.13.K.3, Geneva, Switzerland [4] S. Zhang et al, 40x.Gb/s PDM 1QAM OFDM transmission over,km with Soft-Decision LDPC Coding and Nonlinearity Compensation, OFC 20, PDPC.4, Los Angeles, California [] M. Mazurczyk et al, 30Tb/s Transmission over,30km using 1QAM signals at.1bits/s/hz spectral efficiency, ECOC 20, Th.3.C.2, Amsterdan, Netherland [] M. Salsi et al, WDM 200Gb/s singlecarrier PDM QPSK transmission over,000km, ECOC 20, Th.13.C., Geneva, Switzerland [] P. Poggiolini et al, Performance Dependence on Channel Baud-Rate of PM- QPSK Systems Over Uncompensated Links, IEEE Phot. Tech. letters, Vol. 23, n. 1, pp1-1, January 1, 20 [] J. Renaudier et al, Spectrally Efficient Long-Haul Transmission of 22-Tb/s using Copyright SubOptic 2013 Page of

6 40-Gbaud PDM-1QAM with Coherent Detection, OFC 20, OW4.C.2, Los Angeles, California [] O. Bertran-Pardo et al, Submarine transmissions with spectral efficiency higher than 3b/s/Hz using Nyquist pulseshaped channels, OFC2013, OTu.2B1 Anaheim, California [] Yi Cai et al, 20Tbit/s capacity transmission over,0km, OFC 20, PDPB4, Los Angles, California [] O. Bertran-Pardo et al, Transmission of 0GHz-Spaced Single-Carrier Channels at 1Gb/s over 00km, OFC 2013, OTh4E.2, Anaheim, California Copyright SubOptic 2013 Page of